Social and Economic Development: An expression of faith in action

“Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” ~ Baha'u'llah

Bahá’í development projects are a global enterprise where Bahá'ís act locally to learn to translate Bahá'u'lláh’s teachings into action to resolve problems.  Organic urban gardens . . . a children's theatre company . . .child and junior youth day camps . . . literacy programs . . . community peace festivals . . . community beautification projects . . . a parent university . . . women on the move . . . These are just some of the endeavors underway across the United States that illustrate lines of action taken through grassroots initiatives and evolutionary growth.  Such activities undertaken by Bahá’í communities range in scale and sustainability. Each strives to put in place community-wide learning and capacity building while addressing immediate needs.

Share here examples of endeavors that channel the talents and energies of individuals in your community in service to humanity.

Crisis and Victory

In a prayer for youth, 'Abdu'l-Bahá supplicates:

O Lord! Strengthen these fragile seedlings that each one may become a fruitful tree, verdant and flourishing. Render these souls victorious through the potency of Thy celestial hosts, that they may be able to crush the forces of error and ignorance and to unfurl the standard of fellowship and guidance amidst the people; that they may, even as the reviving breaths of the spring, refresh and quicken the trees of human souls and like unto vernal showers make the meads of that region green and fertile.

Those who have studied Ruhi Book 4 know that the lives of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh provide us with an important object lesson: that the Cause of God advances through a series of crises and victories. It “moves from crisis to victory to crisis to victory, and no power on earth is capable of stopping its onward march.” The same principle holds true on a smaller scale at the level of individual core activities, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program. The following story tells of a junior youth group in crisis, and how a personal tragedy helped the group turn that crisis into victory.

Today our junior youth group experienced a breeze of confirmation. Over the past few weeks, our group has been struggling with disunity, and today, we finally began to overcome that barrier. We started with a prayer; we had never done this before, but since the junior youth had not been getting along lately, I figured it would set a good tone. Afterwards, we decided to update our group “pact” with a new set of guidelines that all of the junior youth came up with together, including some new members. We emphasized that these guidelines were important to prevent future problems that could contribute to the disunity our group was currently facing.

After revising the pact, we went to play soccer. As we were walking, Jack called me over from across the street. Jack is the stepfather of one of our former group members, Jeremy, who moved away about a month ago. His mom, Melony, had lost both of her legs to cancer four years ago, and she had sent Jeremy to live with his dad because it was time for him to have a full time male role model. Today, I learned from Jack that Melony knew she did not have long to live, and wanted Jeremy to be settled in with his father by the time she was gone. Melony lost her life to cancer just a few days ago.

I had never seen Jack so speechless. He could not express any words to me, so he sent me inside his home to talk with Connie, Melony’s best friend of 17 years. Connie sketched out the last moments of Melony’s life. She expressed Melony’s last wishes, which were to have her body cremated and her ashes given to her two sons so they could scatter them in the ocean together. At this point, I realized that Connie and Jack were not only mourning the death of Melony, but were also worried because they were $225 short in paying for her funeral expenses.

What happened next was beautiful. I got to share prayers with them. We said a prayer for the departed, and I assured them that God would take care of this problem. Then my co-animator arrived and also shared prayers with them. I asked them for permission to share this news with the rest of the group and they agreed. I joined the group on the soccer field and informed them of their neighborhood’s loss. They wanted to know if Jeremy was okay, and how they could help. I told them about the funeral expenses, and they immediately wanted to do something. This became our next service project.

After offering condolences, the group fanned out into the neighborhood in teams of two, and in a span of just an hour we collected over $150. We presented this money to Jeremy’s family, and this is when I realized how empowered the group had become today. Connie and Jack expressed their thanks in such a way that the junior youth truly felt the significance of what they had accomplished. They recognized the purpose of their group; that it is the core of the neighborhood, and that it is strong enough to put aside personal differences in times of need. They showed encouragement, love, generosity, and kindness to a family during a difficult time.

What was perhaps most empowering was that race barriers were dissolved today. Jeremy’s family is African American, while the rest of the group members are Hispanic. The junior youth have been hesitant to invite their African American neighbors to join. When we talked about reaching out to them two weeks ago, they expressed that they were not wanted in the African American community across the street, and they had no reason to go there. But today, thanks to Melony’s sacrifice, our junior youth group was given a reason to bridge these race barriers and to unify as a group to work toward one common goal. A boy, who had dropped out of the group about a month ago but was playing soccer with us, took ownership of the service project and led the group in helping Melony’s family.

We had so many touching moments. One of the youth shared a story of one of the men who donated money. The man said he was going to spend the money on beer, but because he knows Jeremy’s family is in need and because of how much he loves his own mom, he decided to donate the money instead. When this story was shared with the family, Connie was overcome with how special a sacrifice that man had made.

These breezes of confirmation solidified our group today and empowered these junior youth to experience firsthand that they can make a difference in their neighborhood and in the world.

"It's My Bag" SED program assists local children

“As the community grows in size and in capacity to maintain vitality, the friends will, we have indicated in the past, be drawn further into the life of society and be challenged to take advantage of the approaches they have developed to respond to a widening range of issues that face their village.” December 28, 2010- The Universal House of Justice

The Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’is of Lacey, Washington, share with us a report about their most recent social and economic development (SED) initiative, It’s My Bag. These friends are located in the Olympia-Mason-Thurston Counties cluster, which has already launched its intensive program of growth.

Annual Report April 2011, It’s My Bag

Social and Economic Development Project - Lacey, WA Branch

The Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’is of Lacey, WA continue to be blessed to sponsor a local extension of It’s My Bag social and economic project.

About It's My Bag

It's My Bag was founded in 1999 as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization by 5 members of the local Auburn, Washington community with the support of the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’is of Auburn.

Our mission is simple:

To focus our efforts on children in need and include the strengthening of unity and harmony in the community, the development of individual capacity and the improvement of the social environment. In support of these goals we are forming partnerships with other community groups and seeking ways to expand our projects to aid more children in the community. To conduct its programs and activities, we receive support from individuals and the partnerships we have formed. We continue to hope to add to the list of donors in the future. The Lacey Branch of It’s My Bag formed in 2006. Currently there are three members.

The project provides bags of comfort and personal care items to foster children or other children in crisis in Thurston and Pierce County distributed by the Department of Social and Health Services’ Child and Family Services for the State of Washington.

Items for the bags were donated by Bahá’is, their friends, co-workers, extended family members and facility contacts. We received in kind donations and cash from other Local Spiritual Assemblies in the area.

Items put in the bags are travel sized toys, crayons, shampoo, bar soap, Kleenex, toothbrushes with cases, combs, toothpaste, washcloths, notepads, pencils and pens.

Accomplishments this past year

50 bags were delivered in August 2010 to Mason County DSHS office to deliver to foster children. The Mason County office was delighted to receive them. 25 bags were delivered to the Thurston County DSHS office and 25 bags to the Pierce County DSHS office in February 2011 during Ayyam-i-Ha. 100 empty bags were given to Auburn, WA its My Bag (original group) as they had run out of their bags.

The project continued its community outreach to try something different by making bags of school supplies for Lacey Elementary School. We were able to supply a bag for each school room. The cost of this project was extensive which is why it involved only one school. This project involved multiple very specific items asked for by the school that were needed for each bag. The left over items not put in the bags were given to the Evergreen Village Bahá’i School and items appropriate for the foster child project were put in that inventory. In the future if we should contemplate this project, we would need commitment from communities or individuals to fill an entire bag to make the project viable.

Two bags of miscellaneous toiletries, hats, scarves, and socks were delivered this past year to Rosie’s Place, a center for homeless teens who can shower there and get community resource information and help. These items were donated anonymously, not noted as the SED project because the items really came from anonymous donors and included some items received for the other SED projects but did not meet the criteria for those bags.

“Much will fall on the Local Assembly, not as an executor of projects but as the voice of moral authority, to make certain that, as the friends strive to apply the teachings of the Faith to improve conditions through a process of action, reflection and consultation, the integrity of their endeavours is not compromised.” December 28, 2010- The Universal House of Justice

Achieving a Dynamic Coherence Between the Material and Spiritual

“Once human resources in a cluster are in sufficient abundance, and the pattern of growth firmly established,” wrote the Universal House of Justice in its 2010 Ridvan Message, “the community’s engagement with society can, and indeed must, increase.”  How?  The same paragraph provides two avenues, namely the “interconnected, mutually reinforcing” concepts of social action and public discourse.

A great example of social action comes to us from Bahá’ís in Springdale, Arkansas (A-stage), who organized a "Steps to College Success" presentation which was attended by approximately twenty Marshallese* youth and eight adults.

All were very attentive and learned many concrete steps to take for high school preparation for college. They also studied two quotations from our sacred writings which pertain to the spiritual significance of both work and education. It was inspiring to see so many young Marshallese students so enthusiastic and serious about their future possibilities. After the meeting many expressed their gratitude and appreciation.

We truly have gems in our Marshallese youth, and their dreams for professions in the fields of nursing, teaching, police work, heart surgery, and piloting airplanes are very much alive. It is the work of all of us in the cluster to support these dreams with concrete help, with filling out college and financial aid and scholarship applications, and with offering tutoring for the more difficult college prep math and science courses these students will take. They know that we are their resources, and that they can call on those Bahá’ís who have been to college to help them navigate the system.

Most appropriately conceived in terms of a spectrum, social action can range from fairly informal efforts of limited duration undertaken by individuals or small groups of friends to programmes of social and economic development with a high level of complexity and sophistication implemented by Bahá’í-inspired organizations.  Irrespective of its scope and scale, all social action seeks to apply the teachings and principles of the Faith to improve some aspect of the social or economic life of a population, however modestly.  Such endeavors are distinguished, then, by their stated purpose to promote the material well-being of the population, in addition to its spiritual welfare.  That the world civilization now on humanity’s horizon must achieve a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual requirements of life is central to the Bahá’í teachings.  Clearly this ideal has profound implications for the nature of any social action pursued by Bahá’ís, whatever its scope and range of influence.  (The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 2010)

*According to an article in the Daily Headlines page of the University of Arkansas (http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/8805.htm), the Marshall Islands has a population of about 60,000 -- and there are several thousand Marshallese people living in northwest Arkansas, most heavily concentrated in Springdale.